


Ad Nauseum, Until We Get it Right

by stilitana



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Body Focused Repetetive Behaviors, Body Image, Character Study, Comfort/Angst, Dermatillomania, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Excoriation Disorder, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Guilt, Introspection, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Polyamory, Trichotillomania
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 14:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13436532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilitana/pseuds/stilitana
Summary: His voice was oddly strangled when he spoke, as if he couldn’t say what he really wanted to, didn’t have the words. “It’s ok,” he said. “It wasn’t you. You didn’t hurt me.”She did not pretend to understand why he did what he did, and this did not bother her. She was always more concerned with smoothing things over, just pressed kisses to his jaw and rubbed her hands, the soft palms of them, over his skin as though she were smoothing out the folds and wrinkles in their bedsheets, as though she could do the same to him.Sometimes it almost felt like she could.





	Ad Nauseum, Until We Get it Right

**Author's Note:**

> Hello my darlings. This is a headcanon heavy fic exploring the ramifications of having certain mental illnesses in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. It is based in the author's own experiences with these issues and written primarily in the hopes of perhaps reaching those of you with similar experiences so that I can make you feel less alone in whatever small, insignificant way I am capable. If you are not aware I would suggest doing a quick google search of some of the terms in the tags, particularly dermatillomania, trichotillomania, and body focused repetetive behaviors. If you experience these conditions and are prone to flare-ups when reading descriptions of them I would suggest proceeding with caution.

MacCready is on lookout duty on the watchpost by the bridge, his rifle slung across his lap, staring across the river at the street winding through the dry underbrush to Red Rocket. So far the only thing he’s had to shoot were two radstag about thirty yards away, foraging in the scrub, looking ghostly and alien in the early morning fog that settles over Sanctuary when the weather gets like this, a little cooler and damper than usual. Two settlers hauled the bodies back so at least they don’t need to worry about dinner for tonight.

He is trying not to think, trying to empty his mind of everything but the scenery, because idle moments such as this one don’t do anything good for him. Don’t do any good for Duncan.

_Duncan, Duncan, Duncan_. His son is always there in the background, is what he sees when he looks out into this white mist where the world is so still not even a blade of grass twitches. 

Some of his employer’s other companions don’t like him much. (He’s still working on thinking of her as a potential ally, as a friend, as Shana.) Sure, they get along alright, because MacCready is working hard at not antagonizing people these days and most of them trust Shana enough to consider him as an ally by proxy, but he can tell there’s a certain distance kept. He has “loose morals and prioritizes his own well-being,” as Garvey so tactfully put it to Shana one night when he thought they were alone at the weapon’s bench. MacCready was on the roof of the flat little garage segment of that house, their main house, cleaning his rifle and having a smoke. He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, really, but once he realized they were talking about him he froze. He was too embarrassed to make his presence known, and besides, he didn’t want to give away this little spot where in the darkness of night he was hidden, where no one came looking for him, where the fire from below was just barely enough light to disassemble his rifle by and it felt about as close to the light in a cave as he could get without actually being in one.

So he sat up there blushing and trying not to fidget as Shana assured Preston that MacCready was a friend, had proven himself time and time again to be trustworthy. She’d gently reminded him that some people’s idea of family was smaller than the entire Commonwealth, some peoples’ code of honor and need to protect didn’t extend to every random settler they came across, but that did not mean MacCready was lacking his own moral code, albeit one less...expansive than Preston's. That had made him blush for an entirely different reason because,  _ oh shit _ , she gets it. She gets  _ him _ . Without giving away any of the personal details he’d so far confided in her, she brought Preston around.

For now, MacCready thought. Because if he thought MacCready had loose morals now, well, he didn’t know the half of it. Had no idea about Quincy. None of them did.

He didn’t know how he’d managed it, but so far no one had seen the Gunner tattoo above his eye. He kept his hat on, let his hair flop forward across his face even though he hated that. He didn’t know how long he could keep it up but he was trying hard to convince himself the answer was forever.

This is another thing he doesn’t want to think about.

There comes the sound of footsteps from behind him, boots crunching, and then Shana is calling out to him. “I spy with my little eye something grumpy.”

He grunts, but he’s smiling. “And hungry, and bored, and tired.”

“You’re always hungry,” she says, smiling and coming closer. “That’s why I brought you some snacks.” Her voice becomes sing-song as she reveals from behind her back a box of sugar-bombs and a few strips of jerky.

He groans. “And that’s why you’re the best,” he says, making grabby hands and leaning down from the side of the guard post. She laughs and passes up the food. Then she just stands there, shielding her face with one hand and looking up at him. She’s always smiling at him. It’s weird. Or maybe he’s just not used to it.

He cracks open the Sugar Bombs and pops one into his mouth, crunches on it loudly because he knows it makes her wince. It does, and he laughs, grinning down at her.

“You shouldn’t do that, you’ll ruin your teeth,” she says. Jesus, she’s the only person he’s ever met who worries about their teeth this much, except for maybe that one mungo from the vault, but that was a long time ago. (It wasn’t, really, too terribly long ago at all. Sometimes he forgets that he is not an yet an old man.)

The comment stings, just a little, and sends a hot flush down the back of his neck. He imediately stops grinning, leering really, and leans away, sucking his lips over his teeth. And the fact that he has the vanity to be embarassed about the crooked wreck of his smile is more embarassing than his fucked up teeth ever will be. Christ, Hancock and Valentine aren’t even self-conscious, at least not as pathetically obvious about it as he is. 

He wonders if they don’t need to be simply because their confidence compensates. So he does what he thinks Hancock might do, and gives her a toothy grin. “Already done,” he says, but it comes out sheepish and shy, not gloating like he’d meant it.

But nothing terrible happens. She doesn’t recoil or tell him to close his mouth, and why did he think for even a second that she might? She may have the most perfect teeth in the wasteland, have skin and hair that looks like it came out of a pre-war magazine, but he’s never seen her act snobby or like she’s better than the rest of them.

She just sighs, shakes her head, gives him a soft smile that is entirely too fond. “Oh, RJ. You’ve got the cutest little grin in the Commonwealth, don’t look at me like that. I only mean you’re gonna wear down the enamel.”

What did she just say? He leans back, dazed, and he must look like an idiot, staring down at her completely dumbstruck as though she’d just said Strong would be cooking dinner tonight. The thing was, she said stuff like that all the time. Nice, sappy stuff, the kind of compliments he guessed might have been commonplace among friends a long time ago but were now almost extinct except among the closest of lovers, and even then there was a certain reluctance to say sweet nothings, because all too often they fell flat, the compliments rang false.

Not with her. She always sounded like she meant it, even if her tone was light and joking, as it usually was.

“What’s enamel?” he says.

“It’s like a top coating over your teeth that protects them…”

He stares at her, letting a little incredulous judgment creep into his gaze. “If I live long enough to worry about my enamel, I’ll owe you fifty caps.”

“Ok, ok,” she says, chuckling and starting to climb into the lookout post beside him. “Eat the jerky, too, ok? Your sweet tooth is insatiable.”

He isn’t exactly sure what that means, but he can guess well enough. 

“Hey, you’ve got something on your face,” she says once she’s beside him, peering at him, too closely. He flinches automatically. (She’s seen his tattoo, but he doesn’t think she knows what it means. She’s weirdly out of the loop and the only clues she’s given about where she comes from is that it’s not here.)

“You’re bleeding,” she says.

He leans away from her and his hand automatically goes to where the blood is dripping, a sluggish little bead of it above his right temple, muscle memory insinctually finding a wound he hadn’t consciously realized was there. That he’d made.

“It’s nothing,” he says, too quickly, scrubbing his sleeve across his face. She’s looking too closely. She’s too perceptive. There are tiny spots and smears of blood all over his sleeve, there is blood under his short nails, the ones not bitten down to the quick. 

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, just...knicked myself shaving.”

She raises a brow. “You shave your forehead?”

“I’m a hairy guy,” he says, defensively. It’s not a lie. “But, no, I, uh, slipped.”

“Mac?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re a bad liar.”

“I’m not lying!” he says, his voice pitching up like it always does when he’s nervous, when he gets defensive. He almost winces at the sound of it, the words replaying over and over again in his mind where his voice is distorted into a shrill, childish whine.

She laughs. “Ok, ok, fine. You were doing your eyebrows. Hey, it’s not a bad thing. One professional liar is enough for me. More than enough, actually.”

“Deacon giving you sh—uh, a hard time again?” he asks, relieved for the subject change.

Shana sighs. “Not on purpose. It’s just…”

“His personality? Personalities, plural?”

Shana sighs. “I don’t blame him. He has his own reasons for not trusting me yet, and they’re understandable. Once you get used to him, you expect it, and then it’s mostly just funny.”

“Mostly?”

“It’s also a little sad.”

“I was thinking you’d say a pain in the neck, but, yeah, ok. I see that.”

“It’s ok,” Shana says, leaning against the post and propping her head on her hands, looking out at the bridge. “You don’t earn trust overnight. He can take his time, he doesn’t lie about the important things. Our goals and values align, so...if he wants me to think he’s a synth or a time traveler or whatever, I don’t really care.”

“That’s very diplomatic of you. It drives me up a wall.”

Shana grins. “That’s because you think of it as a challenge to tell if he’s lying or not. You hate that you can’t fully convince yourself he’s lying.”

MacCready snorts. “Of course I can, are you kidding?”

“No, I’ve seen you two,” she says, poking his side. “You get all squinty-eyed and red in the face. You wouldn’t let him work you up so much if you were sure. You don’t like feeling like he’s tricking you, but you can’t really get rid of the part of you that takes him at his word.”

“You psychoanalyze everybody you meet like this?”

“Only the ones I want to keep around.”

MacCready just grumbles and takes a bite of jerky, passing the bag to her. 

There is nothing else to shoot for the rest of his watch. It’s a quiet morning. They sit side by side in the mist watching the water with their shoulders brushing and he is grounded and content and not quite safe but happy anyways.

 

* * *

 

 

The tattoo had itched so much while it healed that for a couple days he went around with tape on his fingers, doing his best to ignore the weird looks and rude comments from the others because it was better than the alternative.

(The alternative was a fucked up tattoo because he knew the second he felt the raised skin, the bumpy scabs, he would not be able to stop himself from scratching until it scarred and healed all wrong and then they would tattoo him on the other side and he would not let that happen because he already hated himself more than he’d thought possible for being marked just once.)

He thought about gloves but couldn’t find any that let him shoot as well as he could without, either so stiff it was difficult to move his trigger finger with his usual finesse or too bulky to fit through the finger guard.

He was doing too much shooting in those days for gloves to work. If his hands weren’t wrapped around his rifle they were scratching at his back, and by now he was tired, so tired of himself that he didn’t bother wondering if it was stress or boredom or sleep deprivation, if he’d picked up some rad-enduced rash or was turning into a ghoul or what. All he knew was that he felt bumps or saw some irregularity and then he was picking, and afterwards there would be a scab which was worse because those made him cringe; the moment he noticed them he had to get them off and then there was blood under his nails and he was always tasting it, the entire time he was with the Gunners the metallic tang never left his mouth. It had never been that bad before. He bit his fingers bloody.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, then, except how straight and far he could shoot.

He was good at his job.

 

* * *

 

  
  


Lucy never asked about it. He hadn’t wanted her to see him shirtless unless it was night, but of course she did, and of course she could feel it anyway, under her hands. 

She noticed, of course, that when he was worrying or lost in thought he chewed his nails, picked his skin until it bled. He could recall clear as day the first time she had walked up to him and gently, so softly, taken both his hands in hers, pulled them from his hair where he was worrying at his scalp. He couldn’t meet her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he stuttered, his face burning.

“Sh,” she said, rubbing soothing circles into his palms with her thumbs. “It’s ok.”

And that was what she did, when she caught him. She would take his hands and hold them until he stopped looking like he was waiting to be scolded or punished. The time between grew shorter and shorter until all she needed to do was press her hands to his and he would stop, would give her a tiny, grateful smile, kiss the top of her head.

They never talked about it. They were shy with their lovemaking at first, but that phase ended quickly, and the first time she dragged her nails down his back while they were in bed she felt skin give way, felt warmth and wetness beneath her fingers.

They were both mortified for different reasons. “I’m sorry,” she’d gasped, feeling him freeze above her, feeling him become tense as he held his breath.

His voice was oddly strangled when he spoke, as if he couldn’t say what he really wanted to, didn’t have the words. “It’s ok,” he said. “It wasn’t you. You didn’t hurt me.”

She did not pretend to understand why he did what he did, and this did not bother her. She was always more concerned with smoothing things over, petting his hair until he let out a shaky breath and relaxed against her, sinking down to lie beside her. He’d gone soft between the legs and she was kind enough not to bring attention to this, just pressed kisses to his jaw and rubbed her hands, the soft palms of them, over his skin as though she were smoothing out the folds and wrinkles in their bedsheets, as though she could do the same to him. 

Sometimes it almost felt like she could.


End file.
